1 Hour Weight Lifting Workout Necessary?

Yeah, in that he says this

This is some serious work/commitment - very good to read about this.
For what it’s worth, we have moved all of our training to either Krypteia or something very similar; the results have been better than I ever expected: people are getting stronger, in better shape and much bigger. And as you’ve seen, it takes less time.
As noted in the book, Krypteia is not for everyone. However, we use the same principles and twist/tweak for people who cannot handle that specific program. Good luck in the future and keep things simple/strong.

I read that to mean it was how he was training his athletes. It makes sense in that sorta setting for sure.

So he doesn’t necessarily make a recommendation over BTM but does state he’s moved everyone over to krypteia or something similar in training.

For sure. Training a bunch of athletes at once, something like krypteia makes a lot of sense. Don’t have to muck around with equipment as much, far easier to move through the assistance work.

I’d still have to lean more towards krypteia just because of the time I have allotted to train at night even if he did recommend one over the other.

For sure; use what works for you. Jim just doesn’t seem to be the type to recommend one over the other universally; everything is context dependent. Same reason there are 50 different programs in 5/3/1 Forever; they ALL work, some work better than others depending on the circumstances.

Agreed. Context is everything, hence why an hour long session may or may not be “necessary” depending on circumstance and goal.

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I’ve been thinking about trying Krypteia. The only issue is cutting the press out. I love the press, and if I cut it out and only bench, it’s only a matter of time before my shoulders start bothering me. Right now I’m running 1000% Awesome (for the second time), and I’m supersetting assistance similar to the way it is in Krypteia.

That’s specifically why he recommends band pull a parts and face pulls on any program he has. Jim is no stranger to shoulder issues but if you do that and still have shoulder issues then I don’t know.

I know that I always do a ton of those. I’ve just always had shoulder issues if I benched but did do some overhead work. I’m 34 though. When I was younger I could do whatever the hell I wanted with no issues.

Have you tried using a swiss/football bar?

This is nonsense, 20 minutes is only enough to work up to a top set and maybe do 1-2 more sets (if you rush) for anyone remotely strong. For an absolute beginner doing bodyweight exercises it might be enough, but even then it would be a rush. You actually need to rest between sets, believe it or not, unless you are doing barbell complexes. Those are basically HIIT cardio unless you are weak as shit.

what a thread… I’ve been missing out on this one.

The main problem the OP is clearly having, which pwnisher has probably adequately addressed but I feel like reiterating, is that cakez seems to equate ‘shorter’ with ‘more efficient’. I disagree that these 20 minute sessions are more efficient. My definition of efficient would be ‘what lifting program can I use to produce the most muscular and strength gains over the next 6 months - year’. 20 minute sessions will not produce my desired strength levels as efficiently as my workouts, which, depending on the session, generally range from 45 minutes to 2 hours.

I would be the OP a large sum of money that if you took 2 trainees with identical strength levels, limited 1 to 20 minute sessions, and allowed the other to workout as much as he felt necessary, the second trainee would achieve higher strength levels faster. This is more efficient. If I can accomplish a lifting goal in 4 months, that’s more efficient than getting it done in 6, right?

Side note: You’re not the only one who works a full time job with a family, OP.

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Yeah I have a Swiss bat. That doesn’t really make much difference for me though. I’ve cut out the press before and my rotator cuff started bothering me. I put in some high volume DB overhead presses and it went away pretty quickly. There are people in the industry who’ve stated that overhead work can be important for some to keep away rotator problems from benching.

OP, I could not agree more

What’s the purpose of this link? What would you like me to get out of it? I don’t see anything in here that suggests 20 minute workouts are superior. The shortest duration in this entire article mentioned is 50 minutes, which falls within the range I suggested of 45 minutes to 2 hours.

Staley’s point about making big jumps in warmup weights, and not resting forever between warm up sets, is something I do agree with, and practice. I actually perform even fewer warmup reps than he suggests here. I don’t go over sets of 5 for my warm ups, and I often make bigger jumps. Let’s take deadlift. A lot of the time, my first warm up set is 245, because I just load a 100 lbs plate on each side of the bar to avoid taking all the 45’s, and to spend less time loading. My next set I might just jump to 415.

Hard working sets take a long time though, man. I might work up to, say, a few triples at 545. 3-4 minute rest periods is about what I need to be able to lift that heavy, and get multiple sets in. Then I usually drop weight to something in the 300-400 lbs range, and do 3 or 4 sets of 10. Similar rest periods. Then I might move on to front squats, or ssb squats, and do about 3 sets of 10 with a couple minutes between each set. Then I’m likely to finish with a few sets on the reverse hyper machine and leg press, if I’m feeling frisky.

So that’s 4 lifts, with a total of… I don’t know. 12-20 working sets. That’s probably the range I’m usually in. That’s not a huge volume. My rest periods are reasonable, given that I want to be lifting relatively heavy weights. If I was working well below my capacity, I wouldn’t have to rest as long as I do, but I also wouldn’t make the progress I’m making. So you do the math. How do I get a session like this done in 20 minutes? For me, this is one of the workouts I’m finishing in 45 minutes to an hour. Upper body workouts tend to take longer because I’m doing a wider variety of lifts, given that the upper body is more complicated. Then my strongman sessions take even longer because loading strongman implements just takes a long time, I work with a group, and I’m working very close to my max capacity, as I’m training for specific competition events.

How, then, would you suggest I improve my training?

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Lol, this def applies to the t-nation crowd


You’re just messing with people at this point, right?

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I wasn’t going to get into this part, but yea. Older adults are clearly going to have extended recovery periods… it makes sense that they should be performance resistance exercises less frequently than younger healthy adults.

Also of note: the metric used for determining strength gains was ‘chair-rise ability.’

Let’s let that sink in, and then laugh at our friend exercisemachina for bringing this link to the table as a relevant source for this conversation.

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Ya, man, it’s ridiculous. Half of the participants were probably post-menopausal women. Very applicable to a bodybuilder in their prime.

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